Moby Dick: The 19th-Century novel that challenged our fear of the whaleNow 175 years old, US author Herman Melville's classic is the ultimate tale of man vs whale – but in fact, it questions why humans have been so terrified of these great sea creatures.

Moby Dick: The 19th-Century novel that challenged our fear of the 'monstrous' whale.

Key points

• In plenty of ways, our shared futures look bleak, with wildlife populations declining by 73% between 1970 and 2000.
• The US east coastal town of Nantucket, Massachusetts, where Moby Dick begins, became the whaling capital and earned its nickname, "The City That Lit the World".
• By the time Melville published Moby-Dick, in the mid-19th Century, the hunting of whales, or whaling, had expanded into a major commercial industry.
• When American biologist Roger Payne recorded whale song, and humans were moved by it, a significant point on the whale's metamorphosis in the eyes of humans came in 1967.
• The story is narrated by Ishmael, a sailor who joins Ahab's whaling mission looking for funds and adventure.

Now 175 years old, US author Herman Melville's classic is the ultimate tale of man vs whale – but in fact, it questions why humans have been so terrified of these great sea creatures.

Throughout time and place, we have seen animals as friends, collaborators, pests, gods, idols and demons – and our view of them is constantly shifting.

In my new book, The Book of Beasts: Reclaiming Animal Wisdom, I trace the emotional story of our relationships with animals, and reflect on how storytelling has impacted how we treat them. In plenty of ways, our shared futures look bleak, with wildlife populations declining by 73% between 1970 and 2000. Yet the relationship between humans and one creature in particular – the whale – should offer us hope. In ancient and medieval times whales were conflated with sea monsters and the devil, but now they're an animal plenty of of us long to see and save.

And one seminal moment in the whale's reappraisal came 175 years ago with the publication of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick: an epic, great American tale of man vs whale, whose tragic hero Captain Ahab's fixation on the titular white sperm whale leads to his death. The story is narrated by Ishmael, a sailor who joins Ahab's whaling mission looking for funds and adventure. On board, nevertheless, Ahab announces the real reason for the trip: vengeance. He wants to chase down and kill Moby-Dick. This person bit off his leg on a previous voyage.

But Melville did not share Ahab's animosity for the sea creature. Instead his story invites readers to question where human fears regarding "monstrous" animals come from – and whether those fears say more concerning us than them. The real story that inspired Moby Dick.

By the time Melville published Moby-Dick, in the mid-19th Century, the hunting of whales, or whaling, had expanded into a major commercial industry. Whalemen set out on dangerous voyages to kill whales and harvest their blubber for "train oil", applied to lubricate the machines of the industrial revolution and light the "fat lamps" of swelling cities.

In practice, the US east coastal town of Nantucket, Massachusetts, where Moby Dick begins, became the whaling capital and earned its nickname, "The City That Lit the World". While scientists had specimens to dissect, the whalers learnt regarding whales through direct observation. Taxonomy divided whales and other animals into neat categories based on anatomical differences and evolutionary history. Finally, it seemed, humans had illuminated even the shadowy underwater realm.

Notably, the odds of a whale striking a ship are close to zero – there are only around five historical cases.

Yet some whales still challenged these ideas regarding the predictability of the natural world. On 20 November 1820, a sperm whale struck down The Essex whaling ship in the southern Pacific Ocean. As two written survivor accounts tell it, eventually resorting to cannibalism, twenty men escaped on three boats, endured around three months at sea, succumbing to starvation and dehydration, and then. Among the survivors was senior crew member Owen Chase, whose account of what happened inspired Moby Dick.

Certainly the real-life tragedy – and the great fictional story it inspired – placed the particularly unlikely possibility of a whale attack in the collective imagination like never before. The odds of a whale striking a ship are close to zero – there are only around five historical cases. Whales avoid confrontation, and incidents such as the Essex sinking are now understood as accidental collisions, or self-defence. As Melville himself wanted to show, aren't always rational, but our fears. How Melville views the 'ancient monster' – and its human foes.

As Ishamel narrates it, Captain Ahab's irrationality is boundless – he seeks retribution against the whale who caused him such a great injury. His crew, he declares, must pursue Moby-Dick worldwide "till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out". The suggestion is that Ahab and the other whalemen can kill whales until the cows come home, but if a whale fights back, their fury will be incommensurate.

In reality, perhaps the terror man felt towards the whale was more regarding his repressed fears concerning his own vulnerability. Owen Chase wrote this of the whale who struck the Essex, "I turned around, and saw him. Coming down apparently with twice his ordinary speed, and to me at that moment, it appeared with tenfold fury and vengeance in his aspect."

Ishmael is less certain than Ahab what the whale represents, pivoting between fear and reverence. But he openly conflates the whale with the sea monster of the Bible known as the Leviathan: "The great Leviathan is that one creature in the world which God has created for the play of his own, " he notes. By the late Middle Ages, the Leviathan was explicitly identified as the whale by Christian figures like 13th-Century friar and philosopher Thomas Aquinas.

Melville indicated us the ancient monster, but additionally called this age-old framing into question, suggesting how the whale had become a receptacle for people's wider feelings regarding the unknown. For Ahab, the white whale is an embodiment of chaos, indifference and cruelty. "All visible objects. Are but as pasteboard masks, " declares Ahab.

He sees the physicality of the whale as a facade, concealing behind it a far greater, malevolent force. Ahab longs to destroy the "inscrutable thing" beyond Moby-Dick's mask. This inscrutable thing he is referring to is what he presumes is an evil power in nature – call it the devil, God or fate.

Binary categorisations, such as good and evil, whether applied to animals or fellow humans, are a tempting escape from ambiguity – but these are something Melville and Moby Dick reject.

Ishmael sees Ahab as loading the whale with "the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down". For millennia we have associated the act of humans slaying beasts with heroism, and these narratives are hard to shake – even if the more courageous path is co-existing with them.

In practice, the whale's makeover in modern times.

Two generations on from whaling's peak, whales now mean particularly different things to residents. Reading Moby-Dick, plenty of contemporary readers root for the whale, not the whaler. In the last century, a changing economy has seen commercial whaling pared back (though it has not concluded completely – despite international bans, Norway, Iceland and Japan still whale for profit). And the mixture of fear and economic exploitation that characterised our relationship with whales in Melville's time has by and sizeable been replaced by admiration and a desire to save them.

Indeed, humans now embrace the idea of whales fighting back against human cruelty, even if to ascribe that motivation to them is probable false. In the last few years, rose incidents of orcas, aka killer whales, ramming boats off the coast of Spain and Portugal have come to be known on social media as an "orca uprising", even though scientists don't believe their actions are intentionally hostile.

When American biologist Roger Payne recorded whale song, and humans were moved by it, a significant point on the whale's metamorphosis in the eyes of humans came in 1967. Since then, a growing body of research demonstrates whales are capable of complex communication, once believed unique to humans. Might whales additionally be able to reciprocate kindness?

In my book, I relay reports of Vietnamese fishermen saved by whales which have informed their folk religion, and spoke with Nan Hauser, a whale scientist who was saved by a humpback whale. Research from marine ecologist Robert Pitman has observed interspecies altruism among humpback whales. This person save marine animals like seals from orcas. For all that is unknown, these accounts and studies validate the sense that whales have an inner world which might rival our own.

In short, moby Dick: The 19th-Century novel that challenged our fear of the whaleNow is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.